Mendocino County workers told not to expect more money

Meager population growth and lack of industry translate to flat revenue for the county's budget, Mendocino County officials told an audience of mostly county workers at a budget workshop Thursday night at the Ukiah Veterans' Hall on Seminary Avenue.

That will also mean no wage reinstatement is on the horizon for county workers who have been taking pay cuts, Mendocino County 2nd District Supervisor John McCowen told the crowd.

"We would all like to see improvement over the old normal, and we would all like to see wages restored," McCowen said. "The county can't do this without an increase in revenue."

A point of contention between the workers and county officials who spoke Thursday night was the county's proposed $7 million reserve for the 2013-14 year.

Kyle Knopp of the CEO's office told the audience the county needs to build its reserves before it can consider reinstating wages. The union that represents the majority of the county's workers, Service Employees International Union, Local 1021, contended that the county ended the last fiscal year with a $12 million balance and that the county overestimates its expenses every year.

County workers took 10-percent and 12.5-percent pay cuts starting in 2010, when the latest round of labor negotiations with the unions that represent them began.

"We believe this money will help you if times get bad again," CEO Carmel Angelo said of the county's anticipated $7 million reserve.

Mend Mendocino, a group recently formed by SEIU Local 1021, contended that the county's workers should be its priority in order to keep providing services to the public.

"With wages declining and the cost of living continuing to rise, Mendocino County workers are just barely able to pay for gas to get to work, food for their families and utilities to keep the lights on, let alone help the economy grow," says a statement from Mend Mendocino.

The group held a kickoff event before the meeting to protest further cuts and hold a food drive for the Ukiah Food Bank.

The Thursday meeting was the fifth and final public workshop on the county's 2013-14 budget. The county held a workshop in each supervisor's district in preparation for its annual budget hearings next month.

McCowen, whose district includes Ukiah, said the county's discretionary revenue -- income not earmarked for specific programs or purposes -- has been flat since 2008.

"In the face of that, we have increasing costs for health care and retirement that had to come out of the flat revenue stream the county has," he said. "During the economic decline (since 2008), state and federal funding (for programs the county administers) shrank, and the county had no way to replace that."

Property tax is the primary source of income for the county's general fund, over which the Board of Supervisors has discretion to spend on services.

"For Mendocino County, the (population) growth rate over the past 10 years has been less than 2 percent," Angelo said. "Our population isn't growing, our tax base isn't growing, and when we do our trending over the next three to five years and look at this ... the trend is lack of growth and lack of industry, which is a lack of tax dollars coming into the county."

She and Knopp emphasized that reserves are key to giving the county a cushion so future cuts to employees' wages and layoffs can be avoided.

"One of the biggest wild cards we have is our pension fund," Angelo said, adding that if projections from some of the pension fund's "watchdogs" are correct, "this (reserve) number will be zero."

Knopp said the county has paid an additional $5.1 million annually in retirement costs since 2008.

"We've had additional costs to run the same operation without additional revenue," Knopp said.

Of the county's $225 million 2013-14 budget, roughly half of it comes from outside agencies for specific purposes, according to Knopp. Locally-derived tax money is about a quarter of that figure.

The board will hold its annual budget hearings Sept. 9-11.

Tiffany Revelle can be reached at udjtr@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @TiffanyRevelle or at 468-3523.